The Parish Pastoral Council for Responsible Voting on Monday admitted to having errors during its conduct of quick count of the results of the May 9 polls, wherein it used as basis the Commission on Elections’ Transparency Server.
PPCRV Communications and Media Director Ana de Villa Singson admitted that there were indeed “issues” that surfaced during their conduct of the quick count, specifically in the party-list race.
“Our screens are networked. There was a networking connectivity issue rather than the data. The data was always correct. It’s just the connectivity issue that is why the ones projected on the screen were wrong,” Singson said in an interview.
Singson made the admission following a complaint filed before the PPCRV by the Confederation of Non-Stock Savings and Loan Associations Inc. party-list seeking an explanation about the discrepancy in the votes it received.
In its letter-complaint, Consla noted how the PPCRV Quick Count, which was sourced from the Transparency Server, showed on May 9 that they already have 342,513 votes.
The next day, the party-list group noted that the PPCRV tally showed they already have 523,753 votes at 11 a.m. and 555,896 votes by 12 noon to occupy Rank #14 in the tally.
The results were posted in the Twitter feed of the PCCRV which became the basis of the complaint by Consla.
Earlier, a candidate for Buhay party-list group has executed an affidavit attesting to the discrepancy on the votes garneted by Consla.
In his sworn affidavit that he voluntarily executed, Arnold Arriola of Buhay confirmed that on or about 10:40 p.m. on May 9, 2016, he was able to take photographs of the partial and unofficial votes for party-list groups generated by the PPCRV Quick Count.
Arriola’s photos show Consla garnered 342,513 votes from 68,626 clustered precincts.
The same photo also shows that Consla ranked number 17 among 115 contending party-list organizations with the stage of completion of transmissions stated to be at 74.18 percent.
From thereon, Consla party-list garnered more votes as the Quick Count progressed.
However, Consla questioned how Comelec’s own canvassing results showed that they only garnered a total of 213,814 votes.
Singson did not discount the possibility of the PPCRV having projected the wrong screen shot is not being ruled out.
“That is the problem with having a lot of volunteers. Sometimes, they show you a lot of screens and, we can’t control it, but in the Central Server, we were able to show the wrong screen,” Singson explained.
After learning of the errors, she said they already worked on correcting the figures being projected in their screen.
“That only happened for a short period of time. And when we found out, we fixed it right away… we had to do adjustments to the script of the party-list,” Singson said.
PPCRV Chairperson Henrietta de Villa expressed their readiness to explain before the Comelec or any other body that will probe the issues raised by Consla.
“I will let the IT explain… if they want some certification and we will give it,” de Villa said.
In any case, Singson and de Villa both stressed that their quick count is only partial and unofficial as compared to the Comelec’s officially canvassed results.
Last week, Consla asked the Comelec to probe alleged inconsistencies seen in the partial and unofficial results shown in the Transparency Server as seen between May 9 and the final number of votes garnered by the party-list group.
Several advocates of honest and free elections and poll experts have backed Consla’s demand for an investigation into the anomaly.
